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Subject: Western Union History of the Stock Ticker
This piece was sent to the Digest over the weekend by Jim Haynes and I
hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
PAT
From: Jim Haynes
Subject: Stock Ticker History
Date: 4 Jan 92 06:59:46 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz
The following article was originally printed in {The Western Union
Technical Review}, April, 1961, Vol 15, No. 2. Copyright 1961 by The
Western Union Telegraph Company, formerly a leading manufacturer of
chads.
Telegraph History
Some Early Days of Western Union's
Stock Ticker Service
1871-1910
by Charles R. Tilghman [noted as deceased as of the time of publication]
The Western Union Telegraph Company had been established only
15 years when Charlie Tilghman was a "stock" messenger in
Cincinnati, Ohio. The story, as he tells it briefly, of
early developments in Western Union's ticker service is a
story also of his own resourceful rise to the position of
General Superintendent of Ticker Services.
--------------
About 1871 or '72 when I was a stock messenger in the Cincinnati
office, the Gold and Stock quotations were received by Morse from New
York and copied on manifold sheets and each boy had ten or twelve
subscribers to deliver reports to every fifteen minutes. Gold was at
a premium and was bought and sold like stocks, so we had the name of
Gold and Stock Telegraph Company.
[Photo of etching titled "E. A. Calahan's 1867 stock ticker introduced
by the Gold and Stock Telegraph Co. required three line wires."]
One day, our 'boss' told us boys that they would not need us any
more as they were going to send out the reports on electric printing
machines. In a few days the equipment for a small ticker plant was
received, including a dial transmitter with letters and numerals in a
circle, an arrow or pointer pivoting in the center. The turning of a
small crank operated a make-and-break contact point and also revolved
the arrow, stopping it directly over the character desired. The
operator pressed a telegraph key with his left hand to close the press
circuit and print the character. Six tickers were received. They
were Edison's invention with type and press magnets of six ohms and
required a large amount of current to work them. There was a ratchet
wheel on the type wheel shaft. An arm, extending from the type magnet
and working perpendicularly into this ratchet wheel revolved the type
shaft and the two type wheels at the end of it.
I took a great interest in the machine, helped to set one up on a
short circuit in our office and commenced to practice working the
transmitter. In a short time, one machine was put in the First
National Bank and two wires were run from our office to connect it.
The bankers, brokers, and business men were invited to see the new
wonder of printing by electricity. A crowd came and I operated the
transmitter, sending out stock quotations. It created quite a lot of
excitement and talk. Soon the Company had several subscribers signed
up and a ticker plant started -- I was the operator. This Edison
ticker became known as the Universal ticker.
We operated these tickers ten years before we ever had a voltmeter
or an ammeter or anything to tell us how much current was on our
lines. When we added tickers, we added a few more cells and took them
off when we cut out tickers. We had to judge the adjustments of
relays and ticker by feeling the pull with our fingers.
Bunsen and Callaud Batteries
This was the start of ticker service in Ohio, and Cincinnati was the
only town that had them. We used bichromate of potash and sulphuric
acid solution in a porous cup set inside a circular zinc and a stick
of carbon immersed in the solution. The zinc and porous cup were put
in a glass of water diluted with a small amount of acid. This made a
strong battery of very low internal resistance but expensive to
maintain.
The company was using Callaud or blue vitriol batteries on the Morse
wire and had twelve thousand cells in Cincinnati. The officials at
Chicago were urging me to use the Callaud for ticker service, but I
objected, saying it was too slow and had too much internal resistance
for ticker work. The fight went on for some time. We did not have
any dynamos or motors of any kind in the Cincinnati office at that
time and had no more room for Callaud batteries.
Finally, I got the idea I could use Edison light current to operate
the tickers. I went to the Edison company, explained what I wanted to
do, and asked them to run a special wire into our office and let me
see what I could do with it. They ran in a single wire from their
positive side of a three-wire system. We had no resistance lamps so I
used Edison light bulbs and the small resistance boxes we had. The
Edison current worked the tickers fine and, to make a long story
short, I worked the entire ticker plant, local and main circuits, with
this current. This was in 1880. When I started the first long
distance ticker circuit, Cincinnati to Columbus, Ohio, 125 miles away,
I required both polarities to operate the polar relay in Columbus;
therefore the Edison company ran in a negative lead with no additional
charge.
I also used Edison current to work self-winding clock circuits.
Later I put it on the main switchboard in the Cincinnati operating
room and worked about fifty single lines and several duplex. To do
this it was necessary to buy Edison lamps and make a lamp board above
the switchboard. As I could spend five dollars without additional
authority, my city foreman made the boards and I bought five dollars
worth of lamps and receptacles at a time. It was necessary to take
off two copper battery strips that ran across back of the board and
then run wires from the lamp receptacles to the small disks. After
this was completed and a reserve lead from Edison company secured, we
eliminated three thousand cells of Callaud batteries and the acid
ticker batteries, making a saving of over $3000 per annum. The Edison
company had taken out their meter and given us a flat rate of
twenty-five dollars per month.
I wrote to Mr. G. B. Scott, Superintendent at New York, and asked
him to have a piano key transmitter made with a motor to work on
110-volt D.C. After a lot of correspondence, they sent me a
transmitter and motor for 110 D.C. and told me to be very careful not
to let it burn up and be sure to let him know how it worked as it was
the first one ever made to use Edison current.
Self-Winding Tickers
The self-winding ticker was invented by Mr. George B. Scott,
Superintendent of the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company in New York,
and Mr. W. P. Phelps of the Philadelphia Local Telegraph Company. Mr.
Phelps invented the automatic shift from letters to figures and vice
versa by changing the polarity on the second or winding wire. This
was a great improvement over all other styles of printer at that time.
They were first called the Scott-Phelps ticker. In 1903, Mr. J. C.
Barclay, then Assistant General Manager, wanted to change the ticker
and make it smaller. He called Mr. Jay R. Page from Chicago to New
York for suggestions on the change; and, with Mr. Scott, they decided
to put the escapement magnet and adjustment screws inside the ticker
frame. After this change the ticker was called the Scott-Phelps-
Barclay-Page ticker.
My first experience with these tickers came when Mr. Barclay
transferred me from Cincinnati, where I was Assistant Superintendent
of the seventh district of the Central Division by appointment of Col.
Clowry, to New York, May 1, 1904,
[Photo titled "Later model of Calahan ticker now in
Western Union Museum, New York."]
and made me general inspector of ticker service in all divisions. Up
to this time, I had never even seen these tickers working for they had
not been put into service in the west, and I knew not a thing about
them. Yet the very first thing Mr. Barclay asked me to do was to make
these two-wire tickers with four pairs of magnets in them work a long
distance on one wire.
A single underground wire from the ticker plant under the stock
exchange to the repair shop in the Supply Department on Franklin
Street was assigned for the test. I started to connect up the relays
and tickers and then go down and make the connections on the ticker
panel at Broad Street. At the end of the third day, when I went down
to our office and told Mr. Barclay that I had the tickers working on
one wire but not completed, he said in a very cross voice, "Oh, what
takes you so long; hurry up." I later learned that electricians and
ticker men had worked for two months and spent two thousand dollars
trying to work the tickers from New York to Boston and had given up,
saying it was impossible.
Long Distance Service
I understood the quadruplex and that night I thought of using the
quad neutral relay to work the repeat and next morning I connected one
up before market opened and received the full market all day O.K. on
my fourth day of testing. I took the day's tape down to Mr. Barclay,
who looked it over and said, "Let's go in and show President Clowry."
Mr. Barclay told the president, "Now we have a one-wire long distance
ticker and we can put tickers all over the country." That was the
start. The next week, Mr. Barclay said, "Now, Tilghman, put up a long
distance stock ticker in Philadelphia."
When I went over to Philadelphia, the other inventor of the ticker,
Mr. Phelps, said, "Mr. Tilghman, I will do everything I can to help
you and would like to see it work, but it cannot be done. The ticker
that will work from New York to Philadelphia does not exist; there is
no such machine."
It was much harder to work over the ninety miles to Philadelphia
because of the induction from other wires. I found that when the
operator in New York would strike the repeat key thus taking the
current off the line for a fraction of a second, the induction from
other lines would cause the polar relay in Philadelphia to jump ahead
two or three characters. I went back to New York and bridged the
break of the repeat relay with adjustable rheostat, leaving just
enough current on the line to hold the polar and type wheel on the
character the operator was holding; then adjusted my neutral relay in
Philadelphia so that it would break away over the light current and
repeat the character. Finally, we got it to work so that the keyboard
operator in Philadelphia sent from tape of the New York ticker.
[Photo titled "Thomas A. Edison's two-wire "Universal"
ticker, much improved, was used for many years."]
[This appears identical, as well as I remember, to a
ticker I saw in operation in a Western Union office,
circa 1950.]
Then Barclay said, "Now go on to Baltimore and Washington." This
was some task and required repeaters in the line. The installation
took time and Mr. Barclay sent Mr. William Finn over to help me in
order to hurry up the job. Mr. Finn certainly was a very fine man to
work with and gave me some good advice about the use of condensers.
It was finally accomplished and we worked to Washington, later
extending the circuit to Richmond, Virginia.
And so the long distance service spread. In 1905, I went all over
New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana securing subscribers for
stocks and baseball. One year, I secured $29,000 worth of service
before baseball opened. In February 1910, Mr. Barclay left the
company and Mr. Atherton, a splendid man with a very kind disposition
and big heart, took his place. I was transferred from General
Inspector to Mr. Atherton's staff. That summer, Mr. Kitton and I had
our first vacation. I had been in the service forty one years.
Mr. Atherton died the next year and I went into the office of Mr.
Yorke, a perfectly splendid man to work for; fair, and just to all. I
was with him all during the war; and, while in his office, was given
charge of the ticker repair shop. One day, Mr. Yorke spoke of the
"alphabet ticker", meaning the Scott-Phelps-Barclay-Page ticker, and
wanted to know if I couldn't give it a shorter name. He didn't like
all those names. I replied, "Yes, we can call it the self-winding
ticker". He said to do it and drop all those names. So it has been
the self-winding ticker ever since. Mr. Yorke changed my title to
General Supervisor of Ticker Service. I remained with him until Mr.
Titley came and was made Vice President of the Plant Department, when
I was transferred to his office. He was another grand man and it was
a great pleasure and honor to be associated with him.
The Western Union Co. had thousands of Burry tickers for which they
were paying the Stock Quotation Tel. Co. $3.00 per month rental which
totalled approximately $35,000 per annum. These tickers cost $32.00
each to manufacture. At the same time Western Union had a large stock
of their own tickers in the Supply Department and the Superintendent
of Supplies asked for authority to sell or destroy them. He said they
would never be used and took up too much room. Later he asked if he
could get rid of 100 a month until they were all gone. I said, no, we
would use them to replace the Burry tickers and save the rental. The
Burrys were not so fast as the self-winding tickers and would get way
behind on active markets.
The first town I changed was Washington, then Baltimore, Albany,
Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and many more. Boston was using 350
Burry tickers and Chicago 750. They also used the Worisching ticker
that was owned by the Stock Quotation Co. It was years before we got
all these rental tickers out of our service.
Superintendent Scott used two polar relays to work each self-winding
ticker circuit. He said we could not possibly work with one on
account of the spark on the points. These relays were 135 ohms each.
This made a great load on the transmitter and great retardation in the
local circuit; also created lots of sparking on the break wheel of
transmitter which was revolved in oil to keep from sparking and
burning. I told Mr. Scott I had put in new self-winding plant in
Washington using only one polar relay on each circuit and it was
working all right. There was no sparking on relay points.
[Photo titled "Messrs. Scott, Phelps, Barclay and Page
all contributed to "Self-Winding" ticker design." shows
a ticker under a glass bell jar, and printing on the base
"Quotation furnished by Western Union Telegraph apply to
local manager"]
The Big Blow Out
The old stock ticker plant in the basement of the stock exchange was
operated from a storage battery plant of 150 ampere hours cells and
350 volts, positive and negative. From these batteries there were two
large size copper wires run around three sides of the ticker room.
Smaller wires were connected with the larger wires and run direct to
the points of the polar relays on the ticker circuit panels. The only
fuse was one connected in each battery wire in the battery room.
One day in September 1910 there was a short circuit on one of the
stock circuits that blew out the fuse, splitting the fuse block in
pieces. This cut off the entire stock ticker service in New York and
all over the country for the Morse operators in the Western Union
operating room were sending in all directions from the ticker tape.
This blow out made some blow up!
General Manager Brooks came hurrying into Mr. Athern's office and
asked him to send me down to Broad Street to see what was the matter.
Up to this time I had nothing to do with this New York plant as Supt.
George B. Scott was in direct charge of it. I went down,
investigated, came right back and made my report. Mr. Athern and Mr.
Brooks both said for me to go back and take charge; do anything, order
anything you need, only fix it so it will never happen again.
I ordered material and started the work with six or ten men
immediately after market closed each day, and worked till 9:00 or
10:00 P.M. I had a fuse put in each battery wire and through a
resistance lamp to every ticker circuit panel. I found every circuit
in the plant had positive pole connected to unison so the entire load
of about 75 or 80 amperes was on one battery lead. When I asked why
they did not put half the load on negative, they said "Why you must be
crazy, the tickers would not work." Well, I had it done nevertheless
-- and the tickers operated just as before.
--------------
haynes@cats.ucsc.edu haynes@cats.bitnet